


Once More, With Feeling

by Lyssandra_Med



Series: One-Shot [72]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood and Injury, F/F, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:40:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26499538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyssandra_Med/pseuds/Lyssandra_Med
Summary: Max screwed up. Max goes back. Maybe someone new can fix this?
Relationships: Maxine "Max" Caulfield/Chloe Price, Rachel Amber/Chloe Price
Series: One-Shot [72]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1429282
Comments: 5
Kudos: 15





	Once More, With Feeling

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Kaukasos](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13620687) by [TheOV](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOV/pseuds/TheOV). 



> Appears I'm only really capable of writing angst for this fandom, and even then only like once a year (I write a ton for another fandom but with LiS it's like "well everything amazing has already been written"). 
> 
> I'm writing this based on some emotions/feelings/HC's from the lovely work of TheOV, their amazing work, "Kaukasos". I took the inspiration for this little one-shot from that story, so if you've not read it I suggest you do, or this will spoil some of that. It's less an "insert" to their lovely work and more my take on a portion of that story as its own standalone thing.

It was easy when she thought about it - _if she tried, concentrated and blocked out all the rest_ \- to forget that this place was somewhere special. It was easy for her to pretend that it had never happened, that all the broken shapes spread out before her weren’t graves. It was easy to see that the tangle of vines were just that, vines. The wall of vegetation was made of shrubs, not broken walls and rotting cars. The paint peeling away from the facades of businesses left to expire were harder to rationalize, the blacktop shining through the greenery even more so. The ruinous images were all phantoms sent to haunt her, a vague mirage of pain amidst the Hell that week had been.

It was quite easy to pretend that she hadn’t decided to murder the entirety of a town and all its myriad inhabitants. It was easy to pretend that a freak blowout had simply shown up and claimed far more than its destruction had warranted. It was easy for her to sit there and pretend that she hadn’t held a gun to her best friend’s - _lover’s_ \- head, the only way to release the hammer being a willing acceptance of death or the alternative of a bomb dropped on a sleepy little town.

It was easy for her to pretend that she’d been in a good state of mind back then. That her decision had been easy. That the results were what she wanted and that she wouldn’t change it for the world.

Until it wasn’t so easy anymore.

Until a rather ridiculous discussion in an introductory course to Psychology had her screaming in the hallway about trolleys being _stupid._

Until the blue hair spread between her fingers was turning blonde, then brown, black and then red. A mirage only worked when one was far away and unwilling to confront the lie. It was only effective when she ignored her desire to see beneath it. 

Coming home had been a treat.

Until it hadn’t.

Until the fact that there were colours at all had become a pain. A burden. An argument that she wanted desperately to forget, an argument she wanted nothing more than to rewind away into the farthest reaches of her mind. An argument where reminding a loved one about _why_ they were alive - _and who they had to thank_ \- was the biggest mistake she’d ever make.

In the aftermath of their flames she’d wondered whether it was still Stockholm syndrome if one was bound by shared trauma instead of the constant threat of it. She wasn’t sure of the answer to that, she never really had a chance to ask.

The body lying spread-eagled in the street couldn’t talk to her anymore, and then she’d only been able to see red.

The days afterwards were a flash of faces and emotions. Her mind whirled into overdrive, her body worn down under constant exhaustion. She never attended the funeral. She hadn’t attended it before and she had no desire to start now. 

Couldn’t do it.

She fell into a fitful sleep only when her adrenaline gave out. Thirty-six hours awake proved to be her maximum. She fell into her bed only when their friends - _so very few of them, too few, when had their life together become so stifling?_ \- forced her underneath the covers, locked the door from the outside and stood guard at all the windows.

She rewound from their clutches and fell asleep in her car somewhere up north but not north enough. Not anywhere near close enough. Rewound away the sleep as if finishing this quickly would make it easier.

Maybe it would. Maybe she’d come to her senses if she waited, if someone managed to talk to her. Stop her.

She’d never done this before. Hadn’t wondered if she could, had no clue as to whether it would really work or not. 

She had to try.

She’d tested the boundaries before and those few seconds that she’d been gone were more than enough to give her the push she needed. 

Seeing long hair and a skateboard beneath _her_ feet was enough of a kick to get on with it, even if the nosebleed and accompanying shock had knocked her from that body with an annoying sort of swiftness.

She needed to be older. She jumped.

Jumped until the hoodie around her body - _tattered and broken_ \- was whole. The hair on her head - _once short, spiked through with colour and_ ** _angry_ ** \- now long and flowing, bunching up as it fell in soft ringlets down her back, still wet from a recent shower. Her body was older and tired, thirty-three years of life jumped back and condensed into a body merely fourteen years old.

Too much.

Shifting ahead a few years hadn’t solved the issue but it had given her more time.

The blood pouring down from her nose wasn’t an impediment so much as it was a timer. It would be a race to the finish, complete the notes and all the rest of it before she lost this thread. Finish it before she passed out and found herself sent back to a future she didn’t want to remember. Did it matter if this worked? She couldn’t know. _She_ might not know. _She_ might come back to herself when the edges of this world closed in, and then she’d just have to pick up the pieces and decide on what to do next.

The knock on her door was soft and unexpected. She shoved the notebook away into the sliding drawer and turned before it opened fully. She saw - _felt_ \- the horror on her mother’s face when she took in the sight of the girl seated before her.

Blood dripping down her lip and puddling in her lap, a dull glaze to her eyes that hid a fire that had - _once, and hopefully never again_ \- killed hundreds of people.

Could she force herself to do that again? Could she force _this_ version of her to do that? The Storm had still come in the timeline she’d aborted, the timeline where Chloe had more than enough of an actual reason to hate her. The whales had still been beaching themselves, the moon had still split in twain, the eclipse had still managed to douse them all in darkness.

But there was a chance that this could work.

There was a chance that this might do some good. 

Maybe - _if she were lucky Chronos looked down on her with favour or whatever fucked up God that had given her these powers would decide to play nice_ \- this time she wouldn’t end up in a rundown apartment. Maybe this time she wouldn’t work herself to the bone for a life that wasn’t worth living anymore.

Maybe this was just suicide by temporal fuckery. 

\---

When she managed to wake up there was nothing and no one around her. 

There was a soft beeping, the noise of some piece of hospital machinery and the shadow of someone standing behind a window she could barely see through. The hallway was far away. They were far away.

 _She_ was far away.

Everything else around her was white, was pain, was something that couldn’t explain just why she was even in here.

But then the memories all flooded back and there was more than enough for her to understand.

To realize.

To understand and then obsess.

Doctors and psychologists walking in circles around her head. Her shattered state of being was a tipoff that something had gone monstrously wrong, but none of them understood it. She flinched away from cars and stared blankly at the wall when she couldn’t tell them why. She could only stare ahead and lie, lie as if it were normal for a young girl to go from vibrant - _or as close to it as she had ever come_ \- to muted, sullen and angry with a world that didn’t exist yet.

She had - _hadn’t yet, possibly would never, certainly had been an accessory to_ \- made choices that led to a murder of massive proportions.

_She was a monster._

She had watched - _hadn’t yet, maybe wouldn’t, had looked on unnecessarily_ \- as her best friend - _eventual lover, her eventual demon, her eventual raison d'être_ \- was left to die painfully in the bathroom - _junkyard, train tracks, junkyard, bathroom_ \- with no one to reach out and save her.

The notebook was still exactly where she’d left it. 

It was covered on the front with blood and grime but it was there and it was real, and the words written in it were done in her looping handwriting. _She_ had written it. _She_ had written this. _She_ or another _Her_ or one like her but _not_ Her. 

Someone.

Did it really matter who? She had all these memories and emotions, all these plans and decisions.

 _She was a monster._

Time turned onwards - _turned back_ \- and she knew then that it was real. Time turned and she used it to plan.

Scraping by for a bus ticket when she shied away from cars was hard. Getting herself into a seat next to an older gentleman who smelled of cheap cologne and looked far too much like _Him_ was harder still. Finding herself stepping off the curb in a town she’d once called home, with a bag strapped to her back and fire in her eyes - _no one to know_ **_Her,_ ** _no one to stop_ **_Him_ ** \- was the hardest part.

It was all so little and yet she wanted to crawl away. She wanted to hide. She wanted to pretend that the voice in her head had never been real, she wanted to pretend that these memories were fake. She wanted to pretend that this was a mental breakdown and none of this was happening _but it was._

It was happening and here she stood in the middle of a crowd of unknown people while two new - _lovers, soulmates,_ **_something_ ** _-_ friends went about twisting their lines into something much more than what a centuries-old playwright had intended.

She was here and it had begun.

\---

She was still here, staring out across the seaside ruin while the sun fell low into the background.

She was still here and staring out across all the broken memories.

With a heavy sigh - _a cackle from a broken throat, her mind present but slowly fading, the edges of this photograph going up in flames_ \- she began again.


End file.
